The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh, Volume One (4 page)

About time,
Roberta thought.

The bottom end of a black nylon cable struck the sidewalk only seconds before the man himself touched down on the pavement. A tall, slender individual in a conservative gray suit, he looked to be in his late thirties, with touches of gray streaking his neatly trimmed brown hair. Shrewd gray eyes coolly assessed the situation: Roberta’s torn coat, the knife-wielding stranger on the ground.

“Trouble, Ms. Lincoln?” Gary Seven asked calmly, arching a nearly invisible, faint-brown eyebrow. As if his dramatic entrance were not incongruous enough, a sleek black cat was draped over his shoulders. A white collar studded with sparkling transparent gems glittered against the feline’s glossy fur.

“You might say that,” Roberta conceded. The cat squawked at her indignantly, as if criticizing the human female for her carelessness in attracting the likes of Old Jack.
And hello again to you, too,
Roberta thought peevishly, glaring back at her four-legged nemesis, who sprang from Seven’s shoulders onto the pavement, looking grateful to be back on solid ground.
Mrraow,
the feline squawked once more.

[15]
“Quiet, Isis,” Seven addressed the cat. “I’m sure this wasn’t Ms. Lincoln’s fault at all.”

All of this was much too weird for the dumbfounded slasher; with a burst of unexpected strength, he threw Roberta off him and scrambled to his feet. Abandoning his knife, he darted away, eager to make a hasty exit.
No way!
Roberta thought angrily.
You’re not getting away from me that easily.
Snatching up her servo from where it had fallen, she set the weapon on Subdue and fired at the fleeing bad guy.

Despite his frantic haste, Jack was still in range. Watching his scurrying figure slow down, then collapse onto Unter den Linden, Roberta started to take off toward the tranquilized maniac, only to feel Seven lay a restraining hand upon her shoulder. “Not now, Ms. Lincoln,” he advised. “We have no time for this.”

“But—?” she blurted. The man was a menace to women everywhere. She couldn’t just let him off with a warning.

“Leave him to the local authorities,” Seven instructed firmly, no doubt anticipating her outraged arguments.

As if to prove his point, a shrill whistle suddenly blared from the vicinity of the gate.
“Achtung!”
a harsh voice cried out, followed by the sound of boots pounding on asphalt. “Put your hands up and stay where you are!”

Oh, no!
Roberta realized that her altercation with Jack had finally drawn the attention of the border guards. Lights came on in the previously darkened windows of the embassy. Voices inside shouted in Russian, even as an enormous searchlight, mounted atop a sentry tower just before the Brandenburg Gate, swung in their direction, exposing all three of them—Roberta, Seven, and Isis—to a blinding glare that lit up the entire block. The spotlight stretched the trio’s shadows out like taffy behind them.

“This way,” Seven instructed. Leaving his rappelling gear behind, he scooped up Isis and began running up the boulevard, away from the onrushing soldiers. Deciding that maybe Old Jack had hit on the right idea after all, Roberta needed no further urging to sprint after Seven, servo in hand.

“Halt!” she heard someone yell less than a hundred yards behind
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her, accompanied by barking dogs and running feet. More whistles shrieked in her ears, summoning reinforcements? “Stop or we’ll fire!”

Time to make like Secretariat,
Roberta realized. Knowing that surrender was not an option, Roberta galloped north as fast as her well-exercised legs could carry her. Seconds later, a shot rang out and a bullet whizzed by her skull, nearly winging her beret.
A warning shot,
she wondered anxiously,
or just lousy aim?
A welcome surge of adrenaline gave her an extra burst of speed, so that she nearly caught up with Seven and Isis.
How come the kitty gets a free ride,
she thought resentfully,
and I have to run my butt off to keep from becoming an international incident?

More bullets whirred past her, making her flinch with every near miss. No matter how many times it had happened to her over the last few years, she’d never gotten used to being fired upon. The
rat-at-tat
report of machine guns echoed across the spacious boulevard as she hurried desperately toward the sheltering darkness beyond the incandescent reach of the searchlight.
That’s it,
she thought in well-deserved exasperation, staring balefully at the retreating back of her employer.
I
definitely have to talk to Seven about hazard pay. ... !

“After them! Don’t let them get away!”

Corporal Erich Kilheffer of the East German army ran alongside his fellow soldiers as they pursued the fleeing suspects. His heart pounded in excitement even as an acute sense of responsibility gnawed at his already taut nerves. The incriminating cables dangling outside the Russian Embassy had not escaped his notice; the fleeing man and woman must have been engaged in an act of espionage or worse, which made their capture absolutely imperative. He knew that his superiors, not to mention their Soviet bosses, would not look kindly on him if he permitted known spies to escape under his watch. These days border guards could be court-martialed simply on suspicion of having deliberately missed while firing upon anyone making a dash past the gate; Kilheffer didn’t want to think about what might happen to him if even one of the two suspects got away.

That’s not going to happen,
he vowed, clutching his Makarov pistol as he charged down the middle of the street. A few yards ahead of him, a
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trio of barking German shepards strained at their leashes, literally dragging their handlers behind them in their eagerness to chase after the fugitives. “Release the dogs!” he ordered on the run. “Try not to shoot the hounds!” he added to the rest of his men. Given a choice, he’d rather take one or both of the suspects alive, but, one way or another, he was going to present their bodies to his commander.

Running up the boulevard, past the austere gray facades of the adjoining buildings, Corporal Kilheffer tried to anticipate the fugitives’ escape route. To the left, only a few blocks away, were both the British and U.S. embassies. Might the exposed spies make for the foreign consulates, in a brazen attempt to claim political asylum?
Not while I’m on the case,
Kilheffer resolved; he’d gun the miscreants down on the embassy steps if he had to.

To his surprise, however, first the man, then the woman, turned right on Glinkastrasse instead. “Idiots,” he muttered under his breath; didn’t they know they were heading straight for the Berlin Wall? A knowing smirk signaled Kilheffer’s mounting confidence in the outcome of this nocturnal chase. Even if the fugitives made it to the border crossing popularly known as Checkpoint Charlie, a couple of blocks southeast, there was absolutely no way they could make it past the East German forces stationed there.
We’ve got them trapped,
he thought smugly, regretting only that he might have to share the credit for the capture with his counterpart at the checkpoint.

As he jogged around the corner, however, slowing his pace somewhat now that he knew his prey was hemmed in, he was surprised to find the swiftest of his troopers milling about in confusion, as were the resourceful guard dogs, who only moments before had been intent on running down their prey. Quizzical yelps escaped the bewildered hounds as they pawed the asphalt and turned agitated brown eyes toward their handlers. “What is it?” Kilheffer demanded. “Where are they?”

Shrugs and silence greeted his urgent queries. The corporal scanned the narrow street ahead of him, searching for some sign of the missing fugitives. Unlike Unter den Linden, this particular avenue was no major thoroughfare. Darkened storefronts faced each other across an
[18]
unremarkable strip of asphalt, interrupted here and there by vacant lots strewn with rubble left over from the Allied bombing nearly two decades ago. Several Trabis, the ubiquitous state-produced automobile, were parked against the curb on both sides of the street, still and driverless, but of the elusive suspects there was no trace at all, only an odd blue mist that seemed to glow with its own faint luminosity. Kilheffer watched the strange, phosphorescent smoke dissipate as he struggled fruitlessly to figure out where in the name of the people’s government his quarry had disappeared to.

In the distance, at the far end of the street, barbed wire and concrete testified to the utter impassability of the Wall. A no-man’s land of mines and crossed steel girders preceded the Wall by several meters, carving out a zone of death that two suspicious fugitives could not possibly traverse with impunity.

But where else could they have gone? Despite his desire to maintain a stoic expression before his men, Kilheffer gulped involuntarily. His superiors were not going to be happy, and neither would the Stasi. He eyed the looming Wall, suddenly calculating his own chances of slipping past the security at Checkpoint Charlie. However the mysterious spies had vanished, and wherever they had vanished to, Corporal Kilheffer found himself fervently wishing he could join them.

“Corporal!” Two of his men caught up with him, huffing from exertion. Between them, they supported the limp body of a homely little man in a rumpled brown coat. His hairless head lolled flaccidly above his shoulders, as though he were badly intoxicated, and his droopy eyes and insipid grin belied his current predicament. His flushed, red face still bore the cracked imprint of the pavement. “We found this drunk lying on the street near the embassy,” Sergeant Gempp reported. “What do you want us to do with him?”

Kilheffer suddenly glimpsed a chance to salvage his career. “Drunk? What drunk?” He snapped a pair of handcuffs on the unlucky inebriate’s wrists. “This man is clearly the leader of the spy ring, and a dangerous enemy of the state. Place him in custody at once, and let no one else interrogate him. I intend to personally extract his confession.”

[19]
The poor sot continued to grin idiotically, completely oblivious of the hot water he had mistakenly landed into.
Probably completely harmless,
Kilheffer thought, with just a twinge of regret, but what did that matter? Someone had to take the blame for tonight’s fiasco.

Chances were, this innocent dupe would not see the light of day for a long, long time.

811 EAST 68TH STREET, APT. 12-B

NEW YORK CITY

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

MARCH 13, 1974

THE SWIRLING BLUE FOG
completely filled the empty, vault-sized
chamber. Empty for the moment, that is. Seconds later, a breathless young woman emerged from the mist, followed by a somewhat older man carrying a cat.
Home sweet home,
Roberta thought as she stepped out of the vault into the office beyond. Overhead lights came on automatically, revealing a tidy office decorated with contemporary furniture. Framed paintings, mostly on a feline theme, hung on the walls, except where cedar bookshelves occupied one entire wall. Roberta breathed a sigh of relief; it was good to be back.

She was still winded from their headlong flight from the East German troopers. Only seconds before, she and Seven had been running down that lonely side street in Berlin, with the determined Grepos hot on their heels; good thing Seven had managed to transport them all out of there just in time.
Those guards are probably still scratching their heads over our abrupt disappearance,
she reflected.
Serves them right for shooting first before even trying to find out who we were.

Its timely rescue complete, the shimmering azure mist faded. A heavy iron door swung closed, sealing the vault away for the time being. Wooden panels slid out from hidden recesses on both sides of
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the vault, concealing the sturdy, impenetrable door behind three shelves of cocktail glasses. Within moments, all traces of the secret fog chamber had vanished from sight, so that Gary Seven’s private office now looked entirely ordinary, and deceptively devoid of any eyecatching alien hardware.

Isis leaped from Seven’s arms, landing nimbly on the plush orange carpet, where she promptly set to work licking the smell of East Berlin from her fur. His arms now free, Seven extracted a plain manila envelope from the interior of his jacket, laying the package upon a polished obsidian desktop. “A good night’s work,” he commented, loosening his tie as he turned toward Roberta. “By the way, who was the rather agitated-looking fellow with the knife?”

“Oh, just your run-of-the-mill mad slasher.” She shrugged out of her heavy winter coat, then plopped down on the comfy orange couch against the far wall. Beneath the coat, she wore a red turtleneck sweater and a pair of faded bluejeans. “Too bad we had to leave that creep behind.”

“I suspect the East German authorities will deal quite harshly with him,” Seven assured her, “especially if they make him a scapegoat for our unauthorized visit to the Russian Embassy.” He removed his jacket and hung it on the back of the black suede chair behind his desk. “In any event, we had more important things to do than respond to a random street crime. Catching a minor psychopath was not what our mission was about.”

I guess so,
Roberta thought, although she didn’t like the idea of not knowing what ever happened to Jack.
Oh well, I’m sure he’ll get his just deserts eventually.